Police-Killers Offer Insights Into Victims' Fatal Mistakes

By FRANCIS X. CLINES,

Published: March 9, 1993

WASHINGTON, March 3—
The cop killer was deep in an eerie narrative, not bragging, not regretting, just lost in the vivid detail as he recalled casually ambushing a highway patrolman too busy with a clipboard and driver's license to see the end approaching.

"Not watching me at the time, I stuck my wallet back into my pocket and pulled out my pistol and shot him," the killer recollected into the video camera.

"He looked up just in time to see the gun going off," the bald, rather harmless-appearing man, in prison now for a life sentence, continued as he recalled the need he saw for a second shot. "I saw him move, an arm or hand, and I shot him again. I killed him. I shot him in the head and killed him." Looking for Answers

The television screen boxed in the killer brightly before turning blank, and Edward F. Davis of the Federal Bureau of Investigation clearly felt the passion of that interview all over again. And again, he focused not on the cold-blooded confession, but on the unusual critique he drew from the killer of what the policeman had done wrong and how he might have lived.

"Before in police literature, the good guys always evaluated the bad guys," Mr. Davis said, describing the turnabout of a new F.B.I. approach to fathoming what may be the ultimate antisocial outrage of gun-encrusted America, the killing of police officers, lately at the rate of six a month.

"What we're doing now is having the bad guys make a conscious evaluation of the good guys' conduct," Mr. Davis said of the three-year project of delving into cop-killers' tales. With his colleague, Anthony J. Pinizzotto, an F.B.I. agent with a doctorate in psychology, he is seeking advice from the killers on what their victims did wrong.

Interviews with 50 murderers have produced the bureau's first sketch of a typical victim officer: someone with a tendency to use less force than other officers and to rely on an instinctive read of a situation and so drop his guard. By the testimony of the officer's killer as well as mournful colleagues, the victim is likely to be a hard-working, laid-back person who "tends to look for good in others" and not follow all the rules, like waiting for backup help.

"The killers are telling the same things the academy instructors have been saying over and over," Mr. Davis said, emphasizing that carelessness about police procedures can easily prove fatal. The killers' taped voices are presenting these findings more graphically than the traditional police academy lessons. A Killer's Perspective

After years of cataloguing the forensic minutiae of each police killing -- 740 in the past decade -- the F.B.I. accepted a proposal in 1989 from Mr. Davis and a colleague, James Baugh, that the bureau focus on the questions of precisely how and why, in the eyes of the killers, the attacks happened. Mr. Davis and Mr. Pinizzotto then traveled to 38 prisons to interview 50 murderers of 54 police officers.

Their work is now being presented at police conferences and academies. Like sketching a criminal, the two men listened to the killers and sketched the profile of a typical victim officer in a 60-page summary of their research called "Killed in the Line of Duty."

No less fascinating for the interrogators were the profiles of the killers, who formed a diverse group of criminal personalities. Fourteen percent, for example, said they might have acted differently had the officer victims been female. Only 1 of the 54 victims was a woman, reflecting the average of such killings for the past decade; two of the killers were women.

"Our bottom line is, 'Don't listen to us; listen to the killers,' " Mr. Davis said as the next taped killer filled the television screen at an F.B.I. office here. The killer, a meek, slender young man, offered a clipped, authoritative critique of why his victim, an officer stopping him after an armed robbery, was too careless for his own good. Too Little Control

"He did not take control of me," said the young felon, as if that was why he now faces a lifetime in prison.

The killer listened as the question was plainly put to him: What might the officer have done differently to live?

"He never controlled my actions successfully," the convict scolded quietly, noting that the officer had foolishly kept his pistol holstered even as he watched his killer wheel around and fire point-blank.

The interviews, conducted under a painstaking method adapted from the bureau's protocol for serial killers and rapists, averaged more than five hours each. The focus ranged from the killers' recollections of their childhoods to their rationales, feelings and detailed descriptions of killing police officers.

A few officers viewing the tapes have objected to the pragmatic, unaccusing style of Mr. Davis, a 52-year-old veteran officer and F.B.I. agent, and Mr. Pinizzotto, a 42-year-old psychologist. The two members of the F.B.I.'s uniform crime reports section take this as a compliment in their stated assurances to the killers of not raking over guilt and blame but salvaging some life-saving clues for killers as well as victims. A Crucial Shortcoming

They are already emphasizing the need to deal with a glaring shortcoming they have found: the dearth of training in what to do when a gunman has control of an officer. To draw in turn is folly, the F.B.I. has found, just as to surrender a police pistol can also be fatal.

"It's intriguing," Mr. Pinizzotto said of the talks with the killers. "Their victims stood guard protecting the rights of the citizenry, and these murders have a special symbolism."

Mr. Pinizzotto found that the killers ranged from a nonviolent career thief who suddenly killed when cornered to a passive, dependent young woman who became alarmed as her lover was arrested as an armed robber at a motel. The woman pulled a gun from her miniskirt pocket and killed two surprised policemen.

"How do these things happen? Why? Especially, why?" Mr. Pinizzotto asked. He noted that as complex as the research project had been the team's next one would be even more so. The two men intend to interview officers who survived life-threatening wounds and ask them what went wrong and how they were almost killed. 'Look What Happened'

"This will be much tougher because they'll have to say, 'Not only did I make mistake, but look what happened,' " Mr. Pinizzotto said.

Of course, there are cases in which an officer made all the recommended moves and yet still died, he said. But the F.B.I. is finding repeated accounts of sloppiness as it gathers killers' accounts of the final actions of many of the victims. This finding leaves the two agents chilled in the face of one murderer's tale, in particular:

"I grabbed the gun in the car and told my two friends I'm going back there and I'm going to shoot this man," one hard-eyed man recalled on the tapes.

The man, who had just committed an armed robbery, was angry at being pulled over by a patrol car for driving erratically. He saw his chance when the policeman became overly busy with his radio: "He wasn't looking at me when I approached the car, which gave me the advantage to get real close to him. He stayed on the radio and when he noticed somebody standing near, all he did was look at me with the corner of his eye. I pointed my gun to his chest and shot him."

Photo: The F.B.I. has been studying 50 murderers to find out what killers think their victims, who were all police officers, did wrong. One case analyzed was that of a mounted police officer in Dayton, Ohio, for whom fellow officers marched in a funeral procession in 1991. (Wally Nelson/Dayton Daily News)(pg. A16)